(Republish) Story Time: Chronos and Kairos in Harry Potter

 ‘Story Time:’ Chronos and Kairos in Harry Potter

(this is a post I believe I first did on www.mugglematters.com. I do know that I shared this version on www.hogwartsrofessor.com, regardless of whether edited from a muggle matters post or written fresh. I'm putting it up here just to have more things up here, since it where I am writing my ramblings more recently and in case it interests any who stumble on this blog for other pieces, and might like this one, but who are not likely to stumble on it at either of the two other locations).

 

 

I have a joke that when I am not doing much and a friend asks what I am up to, I reply that I am busy committing “chrono-cide” … just killing time. “Chronos” is one of two Greek words for time. It means “clock time,” the simple material succession of events. The other Greek term for “time” is “kairos.” This is the term for “special time,” unique moments. In this post I will discuss narrative in Harry Potter (and in general) as an intersection, and special relation, between these two concepts of time. In short I will say that Harry Potter as “story time” is part of what attracts us so much to the works.

In Genesis 1:14 kairos is translated “seasons” and coupled with “signs.” There is a world of significance (pardon the pun) that could be drawn from this single verse concerning kairos itself. For instance, “signs” is the same Greek word in the Septuagint version (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which was authoritative for Christianity, and even for most of Judaism at the time of Christ), as is used in the New Testament Gospels for the miracles of Christ. But for here what is important to note is that in the Hebrew Bible kairos is the word for “loaded” or special time, such as liturgical festivals – times that are packed to overflowing with the reality and meaning of religious interaction with the divine, or at least meanings that go beyond the merely material (when we think of Christmas and Advent, we mean much more than simply four weeks in December every year). In the sense of literature in general, I would say kairos describes the “meaning” of a work.

(But just as a taste of the riches of Potter-connections I must pass by to stay focused, the Greek “seimeia” for “signs” is where we get the word “semiology” for language as a system of signs. But it is also used in medieval debates on theology, philosophy and science, for the “semiological” side of astrology – basically “signs” in the sense of divination.)

The other, and most important, reason that I begin with Gen 1:14 is that “signs and seasons (kairous)” is followed by “days and years,” terms of chronological time. My definition of “narrative” (or simply “story”) is that it is a “kairotic chronology,” a series, or chronology, of loaded events (with meaning), in which not only the moments as individual events are loaded, but also the plot movement between them, the chronology itself. In this verse of Genesis we see chronos (days and years) subjected to kairos (signs and seasons).

But there is a further part to my definition of narrative: chronos is not only subjected to kairos … it always breaks under its weight. I use the term “weight” and the image of breaking under it because of the particular discipline I work in academically, Hebrew Bible. The term for the “Glory of the Lord” that is used in the Pentateuch for theophanies such as the cloud and pillar connected with the Tabernacle comes from the Hebrew verb that literally means “to be heavy.” I find it particularly apt because the central examples of chronos breaking under kairos, or the meaning of the events/plot/work, that I will be drawing from Harry Potter come from Goblet of Fire, a book that is all about the eternal glory of the Triwizard Cup (as evidenced in the fact of Cedric “walking away from the sort of glory Hufflepuff house hadn’t had in centuries” [GOF 634] – forecasted on GOF 293, “Hufflepuff house very rarely got any glory.”)

(And for a trip, try the SS opening potions lesson on for size as a 2-4-6 ring/chiasm connection with: Bottle Fame = Lockhart in COS, Brew Glory = GOF on glory, Stopper death = Dumbledore’s hand in HBP, as per the excellent sleuthing done by many on the presence of the first portions lesson in HBP for stoppering death, with a nice tie-out of the glory theme in Dumbledore’s confession speech in the King’s Cross chapter of DH. And if you haven’t looked into Prof. Granger’s newest work on Ring Composition … it is a must read.)

So, where do we find chronos in Harry Potter? A standard image for chonos is the clock or watch, like, say, Harry’s wrist-watch issues across out seven book canon. The issue of Harry’s wrist-watch is a strand that presents itself, although sparsely, yet at key points in the series, and beyond the watch formerly owned by Fabian Prewett, although that watch, as I hope to show, is the culmination of the theme and the tie-out of the intersection of chronos and kairos in the series (and props to Travis Prinzi for his excellent work tying out the Order of the Phoenix to the real-world Fabian Society).


It is a little noticed, but I think very important, fact that Harry has been concerned with a watch since the very beginning of the series. SS 29 finds him in his cupboard under the stairs wishing he had a wrist-watch. Further interestingly, he is in the dark, which could be taken as an absence of the kairotic light and luminaries of, respectively Genesis 1:3 and 1:14 (and, on a side note, this might be a thematic correspondence between books 1 and 5 to add to Red Hen’s “redux” theory of the structure of the series as a whole, because book 5’s intro is all about how upset Harry is that he is being kept “in the dark” … but that is a story for another day).  The “dark cupboard image” also resonates strongly with Plato’s “analogy of the cave,” but that is a whole other body of background literature.

As we will see (in GOF), he obviously eventually, at some point, gets a watch … and it broke. And, as we will also see, he eventually gets an even better one (one that represents time by kairos elements, stars), one which JKR makes a specific point of mentioning at the very closing of the series. I think this is a progression: the desire to mark the time of one’s life; the finding of the fact that that chronological projects cracks under the weight of experience; and the finding of a new, richer, concept of time by realizing that chronos is ruled (and broken, although not obliterated) by kairos.

So, we see that Harry has a desire for a watch, a chronological reference point by which to map his experience. And, as I said, in GOF we see he has obtained one. The important thing from here on out is where it breaks. Materially we know that is breaks at the bottom of the lake when he has arrived at the hostages (GOF 500). It may have stopped, and probably did stop, some time previous to this, after he entered the lake, but this is the point at which he notices it, the point at which he is faced with making a decisive situation about saving a friend, and worried about a time limit.

The issue of friendship is key for the series, and most importantly here. I have always felt that the lake bottom scene is important. Here there are three kinds of “friendship” present in four relationships. Harry’s direct type is a sort of brotherly love, his concern for Ron. Fleur and Gabriella are obviously familial love. The other two relationships (Krum-Hermione and Cedric-Cho) are romantic love in a situation where all four of the elements in classical/medieval four-element cosmology (which Rowling confirms as the basis for the four-house system) are present: Hermione = Fire (Gryffindor); Krum = water (Durmstrangs in general connect with Slytherin House); Cedric = earth (Hufflepuff); and Cho = air (Ravenclaw).

Friendship/love, when we get down to talking about its role in human experience and meaning, is obviously a deeper element of our lives than words can usually express (at least discursive expression – we usually have to put it in a story, which is part of what this post is about). There are two further pieces of evidence I wish to give here as to the profound weight of the scene in the lake, and the first relates to two terms I have just used, “deep” and “profound.”

To return to Genesis 1 for a moment, the NRSV translation of Gen 1:2 says that the spirit of God hovered over the face of the “waters.” That term, however, has a broader translation of “the deep.” In Gen 1 it is the potential chaos of the primordial world, but a very close term gets used in Psalm 130:1, “from the depths I cry to you, Lord.” This latter verse is even used in pop lit in M. Night Shyamalan’s movie Sixth Sense. There it is actually used in the Latin of the Vulgate (the Latin translation of the Bible done by St Jerome, the authoritative translation for Western Christianity for almost a millennium and a half): De profundis clamo ad te Domine. And there is my second word I dropped in earlier, profound. This is the profundity and depth (in a very literally murky way in the lake) of human experience, and I believe it is what JKR is meaning when she starts off the lake-bottom scene by noting that Harry dove “into the depths” (GOF 495).

My second piece of evidence from this section concerns the issue of story and myth. On GOF 497 Harry encounters the rocks on which the mer-people have drawn their stories about their own identity, such as them chasing the giant squid (itself a potential sea monster character like Tiamat in the Babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish, Leviathan in the Hebrew Bible, and the Kraken in other mythological sets, also used in CS Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader and the Pirates of the Caribbean films, all of which creatures represent the potential chaos of human existence). Here we are definitely in the land (or water, as it were) of story as a way of understanding our own existence and experience not only as individual persons, but as a collective, as a community. And, most importantly, at one and the same time we are in a mixture of chronos and kairos. We are within the one hour time limit, which is the whole reason Harry checks his watch, right?

This connection may take a little more stretching but I think it is there at least latently. In our story in the lake, “hour” is a chronological term. But in the Christian tradition from the New Testament, from which we know JKR has directly lifted at other points, the term is one of kairos, as in “My time has not yet come” (John 7:8 – kairos used), and “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23 – the more specific Greek term for an hour, “hora,” is used as an equivalent of the kairos in John 7:8).

Further support for the importance of the whole issue of the hour time limit is Ron’s criticism/exposition of the time limit, in the context of the song (and that Harry should not have believed the song) on GOF 503. But there are also other instances in GOF as a whole that show that JKR has time “on the brain.” I have usually read the lake-bottom as the center of the whole series.

However Prof Granger, in his new work on Ring Composition for the whole series and for each individual book, has read the first task as the mid-point of GOF, and since GOF is the mid-point of the series, that task would be the very mid-point of the series. In a way I think we are both right, but it would take a really long time to explain that one. Why I bring it up here is that going into the first task, JKR describes Harry’s experience by saying, “time was behaving in a more peculiar fashion than ever, rushing past in great dollops” (GOF 347). She is spending a great deal of time thinking and talking about time in this book.

The important thing to note, and really the crux of my whole exposition in this post, is that it is in the lake, at the bottom, in the “profoundness” (the depths) of human relation (the lake as kairos, an hour devoted to decisive saving action in human relation), that the symbol of chronos, the watch, breaks … in the place of myths that portray the fundamental mystery of human existence and relation, chronos breaks down.

Lest someone might argue that the watch breaking is just a side detail of no real significance, JKR mentions the breaking of the watch no less than three times subsequently in the book. At one point Harry has to check Ron’s watch in history of magic because he has finally discarded his own because it doesn’t work (GOF 569). Before this, during the niffler lesson with Hagrid, Harry takes off his watch, “which he was only wearing out of habit, as it didn’t work anymore” (GOF 543). But before either of these, and my favorite instance because she puts the “hour” term on the page, “Harry checked his watch, then remembered it hadn’t been working since it had spent over an hour in the lake” (GOF 533); chronos just couldn’t take the pressure.

So, now Harry needs a new watch and we finally eventually arrive at that old watch of Fabian’s that Molly gives to Harry for his seventeenth birthday. First, it’s very interesting that a watch, a time symbol, is the standard gift for a wizard coming of age, becoming an adult. Beyond this however, note that, like the watch given to Ron, Harry’s new watch is marked by astrological symbols (stars), the heavenly bodies (likeness of the two watches stated on DH 114)… just like the luminaries are created in Gen 1:14 to rule kairos (signs and seasons), under which is subjugated chronos (days and years). That watch is a symbol of chronos being ruled by kairos (the actual presentation is of the heavenly bodies).

It is also, I think, a symbol of “story time,” narrative time – the way we construct the chronologies of our “days and years” for ourselves in our memories to try to understand the “meaning” in our lives. And that watch is among the special elements from the series that warrant a presence in the epilogue, closing out the story: “He checked the battered old watch that had once been Fabian Prewett’s” (DH 757).

Although this post is about time as narrative in the series, I would like to provide another example of material accuracy breaking under the weight of meaning, this time in the realm of space (being as we all talk about time and space as a pair, Star Trek TNG always talking about the space-time continuum and all that). As far as I know, Red Hen (Joyce Odell) was the one to discover the missing fourteen feet in the graveyard in GOF, at least I think that is where I first encountered it, in her essay in Who Killed Albus Dumbledore? (Granger et al), in which she was trying to pin down objective physical characteristics of the Avada Kedavra curse. She found it because she was looking at the physical distances. I would say that “distance” is to space what chronos is to time. I read the books looking at them differently, but am eternally grateful to Rd Hen for discovering the discrepancy because it provides me with a wonderful example here (and in my Introduction to the Old Testament course for college sophomores, as a way to understand what scholars mean by saying there are a variety of “methods” for studying texts).

I think that Rowling wrote two moments loaded with meaning in the form of characterizing first Voldemort and then the Death Eaters. The first requires Harry and Cedric to be about six feet from Voldemort and Wormtail. The second requires a circle with a forty foot diameter (twenty foot radius) because it must accommodate thirty-plus Death Eaters, and Cedric (whom, at this point, I would call the “dearly departed”) must be outside that circle. (This is where I would differ from Red Hen on the use of space in constructing meaning: rather than focus on quantifications like distance, I would emphasize relation shown through physical positioning, qualification in the service of characterization). But when you put these two moments side by side to show the mentality of the leader flowing into the mentality of the group, material accuracy cracks and breaks under the strain of characterization, of meaning.

All this is not an attempt to diss focus on chronos. As with the example of the fourteen feet, that dealt with material accuracy in the realm of space, sometimes the places where chronos breaks down are the most interesting places to investigate for deeper meanings. But even beyond this revelatory role in its collapse, chronos has a role to play in its positive existence by interacting with kairos, for if we had pure kairos we ourselves would break under it. We live in chronos and it is how we experience our lives; their meanings are meted out to us over time.

I am going to step outside of Potter-dom here because there is an ingenious example of what I am talking about (the positive role of chronos in and of itself, and of its breaking) in the film Stranger Than Fiction (2006, starring Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Emma Thompson – our favorite diviner from the Potter movies – and Dustin Hoffman … and, SPOLIER WARNING: I’ll be giving away the ending of the movie – sorry, but I have to in order to make my point).

In the film we find Thompson narrating Ferrell’s life without knowing he is a real person, and Ferrell kind of bugging out because sometimes he can hear her voice in his head doing the narrating. The thing that causes Thompson trouble once she finds out what is going on is that the logic of the story, where the themes lead in order to fulfill them in the best way, demands that Ferrell die by the novel’s end (and obviously this causes a rather large problem for Ferrell himself when he finds out). But where the film ends is with a saving resolution in which what does the saving is a shard of his wristwatch lodged inside his body, and it cannot be removed or he will die; it must stay there for the rest of his life.

Here the watch is still shattered, but it is still also a piece of chronos, and it is essential to his continued life. Chronos always shatters under the weight of kairos, but it is always precisely that shattered chronos that saves the person from being crushed by the sheer weight of pure kairos (which undo the person, much like God and Moses worry that if the Israelites break through to actually touch Mount Sinai and view God in his unmediated glory they will perish, in Exodus 19:21). Dustin Hoffman’s review of the final version of the novel is that it is not as great as it would have been (he read the original ending), but that it is still good. And Thompson’s response is that she can settle for that if it means saving Ferrell’s life.

We spend our lives in the intersection of chronos and kairos, that tension between what is believable in the sense of scientific, material accuracy (which we need because we are humans, biological and time-bound creatures), and what we need to believe in the sense of faith (which JKR has said is very much what the books are about – and we see this strongly in Harry’s resolution of his feelings about the past of Albus Dumbledore in DH, in the conversation with Aberforth), about that which is beyond us (and our time-bound experience) but in which we believe we participate, in some way or another, that in which we need to believe in order to be human.

Chronos always breaks under the weight of kairos, but in a certain sense this is only really the fact that meaning breaks into our daily existence and gives us faith, hope, and (that deeper magic) love. This is what narratives, stories, myths, express for us. This is what Harry Potter has done for us as readers. It’s one of the reasons the books resonate so strongly for us and have sold so well.

Afterthought as Conclusion:
As a disclaimer, I have to admit that for me a reading like this is also very tied to being an avid student of Post-Modern thought. The 20^th century German philosopher Martin Heidegger is thought to be the grand-father of Post-Modern thought, and his most defining work was entitled “Being and Time.” By the word “being” he means specifically human existence in the sense of human experience, and being time-bound is essential to that experience. Of course, in his 1949 “Letter on Humanism,” Heidegger also wrote that, “language is the house of being.” However, my thoughts on how magic and spell-work represent language as human expression must wait for another post (especially after some much-desired source-work on the Avada Kedavra I have been progressively trying to pin down for some time now … and some equally desired delving into some concepts from Derrida on language). Also, while I came up with this definition of narrative before reading (well, more like studied certain selections of) Paul Ricouer’s three-volume “Time and Narrative” (and, if you believe it, having had to revise the definition from “a chronology of kairotic moments” to “a kairotic chronology” because of the Star Wars prequels), I must also mention that work because Ricouer, in his own language, deals with some of the same concepts.

Argument: Ethics as the supernatural and miracles and the possibility of God

Ok, I am going to try to keep this brief so as to get the core idea concisely. I'll openly admit at the outset that my method of philosophical argumentation is much like my style of street and trail cycling, which I often describe as being a barbarian on two wheels.

I should also add that I honestly did come to this argument on my own as far as I can recollect, but I would not be surprised if philosophers much more erudite etc than myself had formulated it long ago. If anybody reads this and knows of somebody else who said it before I did, please share it in the comments (I'll try to figure out how to make sure they are turned on ... I think they are as long as you have a blogger account or a gmail account to sign your comment with, but I will try to check if there are any settings on my blog dashboard end of things).

I used to (try to) cover this material/argument with college freshmen when discussing T. H. Huxley on the supernatural.

This is not, in its nature, an argument for the existence of God. It is as argument that if you hold to ethics in any form whatsoever, then you have already accepted:
1. the actuality of the supernatural in general
2. the actuality of miracles (the supernatural directly controlling the natural)
3. the possibility of God

Again, this isn't an argument for the existence of God, simply an "if, then" argument. I had one student talking to me after class, and she said that she has no problem seeing all of her actions as determined. As a college instructor, I had to say that, in the context of us talking about the class material, that was fine, as long as she understood the argument I was making (which she did, she was one of the few ... really bright)

So, the argument: If you believe in any form of ethics you have already accepted the supernatural, miracles, and the possibility of the existence of one highest supernatural, personal in nature, called God.

Ethics is defined by the word "ought" or "should," based in three concepts: (1) there is some event within the system of determination we call "nature" that is not determined in its actualization, (2) there is something outside the system of determination surrounding that event that can impact the material outcome of that event, and (3) there is some code in which the "ought" is based.

For class, I used to describe three kinds of "ought"s. The "scientific" says simply that the hypothesis is a best guess; the information is never complete, so a theory is always a guess at what "should" happen within certain control parameters in an experiment or how the outcome will change if you alter those parameters in certain ways. The "pragmatic" out simply says that if you want these results you "should" use that method. The example I always gave was lifting weights: if you want bulk, do high weight at low reps, but if you want tone, do low weight at high reps ... but there is no real declaration on which you should want. But the "ethical" ought, this one does get to bigger questions of what you should want, and the capacity for choosing as a free-will agent.

The supernatural that you have accepted is called the human free will. In order for ethics to make any sense at all, you have to believe that the person whom you are telling they should act in a certain way has the capability to choose acting one way rather than another. That places their action outside the system of determinacy we call "nature." I would argue that most people who advocate ethical action accept it in this sense, even though many people who try to believe in ethics from an atheistic/anti-supernatural standpoint would try the procrustean bed project of trying to fit their ethical beliefs into the category of a "scientific" or "pragmatic" "ought."

The miracle you have accepted is that this undetermined thing (the free will) has entered into and directly manipulated or controlled elements within the system of determination, even in ways that go contrary to the progress of the system of determination as dictated by the forces in play up to the moment of interference. We may not be able to see all the factors at play (and, indeed, we never can see all of them) to verify the ways in which the new course initiated varies form what would have happened if governed simply by the factors within the system of determination, but by its very nature and logic, the free will must alter the results in that system somehow (otherwise there would be no need for an ethical "ought").

The possibility for the existence of God (and therefore of God's miracles) flows naturally. People may have an aversion to the "super" in "supernatural," but once you have opened the door for the "extra-natural," anything outside the system of determination (as I have been discussing, the human free will), you have opened the door to, at the very least, the possibility of the existence of the "supernatural" and a highest, singular supernatural being who might be, like the humans that you began your investigation, personal in nature.

If all of this (belief in God, belief in miracles, belief in the existence of "logic" and the possibility that my argument conforms to it) is said to be simply ephemeral, epi-phenomenal sensation, then so is the impression of ethical obligation of any kind.

Lazarus Effect Review

Flatliners meets Lucy meets Event Horizon meets Resident Evil ... glad family video gave me a free rental to entice me back to more regular renting, so I can console myself that I at least I didn't pay for that one.

I liked Flatliners and the RE franchise, and, at best, really couldn't get into Event Horizon or Lucy. But even if I liked all of them, doing a mash-up of all four is so derivative as to leave no room for any originality. And they swapped the only real chance at resolution in the story (the little girl maybe opening the door as being able to move on) for the cheap and obvious set-up for a sequel ... Lazarus Effect is a bust as far as I'm concerned.

Batting 50-50 with horror panned by the critics - totally disagreed with them on As Above, So Below, but totally agreed with them on this one (and I really wanted to like Olivia Wilde, since I really liked her in Tron Legacy, and this was done by the makers of Paranormal Activity, of which I thought the first two movies were good, so I wanted to like it on those grounds too, but it's just no good ... not as horrendous as Prometheus, but getting there)

Person of Interest Season 4 Finale (YHWH): God in the Box

This is more simply raw found footage - I posted it originally on FB, a friend said "why don't you put this stuff up on your blog?" - I thought it a good idea but don't feel like doing much real editing of a post on here ... I think it's pretty coherent; just has some extra stuff in on likes and dislikes after seeing the finale

OK, so, after a season (4) with only a few real bright spots, namely character-driven stand-alone episodes, Jonathan Nolan, creator and co-runner of Person of Interest, paid it back ... with interest ... THAT was excellent sci-fi

Loved seeing John get god mode

I was happy to see Dominic go, and sad to see Elias go, but that ending scene was KILLER

... and it paid off the debt of so many episodes with so little music - EXCELLENT use of the Pink Floyd Song, excellent setting

I'm glad they stayed true to form and finished it out with their signature slow-mo with a good song in the foreground

I think the case is the ark, being as the episode is call YHWH (with maybe a very latent veiled reference to Jeremiah's hiding of the ark on the eve of the Babylonian invasion in, I believe, 1 Maccabees ... after all, one of the episodes this season was called "Prophets")

The case could also be the tomb, buried to rise again, in a phoenix sort of way.

But, back along the OT lines suggested by the episode title (YHWH), the theme of mobility is also there, which is a central theme in the book of Ezekiel, when E. sees the Cavod (glory/presence) that is supposed to be limited to the Ark in the temple in Jerusalem, but he sees it by the river Chebar in Babylon (the vision in chapter 1 ... E. was originally a priest in Jerusalem temple, taken to Bab in the deportation of 597, 10 yrs before the invasion and destruction of 587) - E.'s theme is that God is not limited to the temple, but is mobile and can go wherever his people are to aid them (represented visually by the wheel-within-a-wheel structure that can "go every way, without turning")

Lots of possibilities. From the side of concern in my Christian background, I think you can avoid "God is really only an evolution of human/machine." AI is always symbolic of  something in humanity. Especially logic is traditionally viewed as part of being made in the imago Dei (I think that was technically redundant, but I didn't think most people would understand assimilating the Latin ablative into an English grammar flow). So, while the imagery is God, the symbolism is still in referent to human existence, and I think its advocating ideas that are actually heresy or anything like that. BUT, the possibility of exploring this theme of stripping the machine down to its core is really interesting. What will the machine look like if reborn? And the whole spin put on the mobility theme is interesting. Before the machine was mobile by being in the power grid - actually it was NOT mobile because it didn't have to move because it was everywhere, so I guess it had all the benefits of mobility without the limitations. Now it has actual mobility, which actually limits it.

For those who dislike seeing religious themes in sci-fi and literature in general, please realize it doesn't have to be a decisive conquest of "ah, you atheist assholes got owned by the Christians again!" (I'm Christian, but I get tired of the triumphalist attitude on both sides ... and ftr, I'm a rather conservative Christian, very in line with hierarchy and formal rites - I like Gregorian organ, and as loud as I like TransSiberian Orchestra and Kings X ... Kumbaya and John Denver don't really do anything for me). Dune used the Messiah theme, and Matrix borrowed it from Herbert; BSG reboot used the Resurrection and the Emmaus road encounter with Thrace/Starbuck; but I don't think you could demonstrate any of those three as distinctly Christian projects; I don't think even Tolkien was doing simple partisan allegory of the Bible, and he used the tropes A LOT more heavily (but you should be wondering why the religious themes work so well for literature).

Person of Interest as Batman for a post-9/11 World and law enforcement

So, this post is just what the title says. Intro linkage is a bit sparse because I am cutting and pasting from my own rambling on FB. This was written upon re-viewing season 3 of Person of Interest. Some details I tried to be as circumspect as possible in discussing to avoid spoilers, and I am too lazy to rewrite ... but I did do it with enough detail that, if you have watched it, you know what it is.

My former roommate made the brilliant observation when, as roommates, we first got into season 1 (while season 3 was in progress), which I had not noticed, that Finch and Reese are the two sides of Batman: the active and deadly operative with nearly superhuman abilities (and calling him "the man in the suit" was a really nice touch) and the reclusive millionaire. This makes total sense because this is Jonathan Nolan fresh from writing the batman trilogy with his brother Chris. But I think it also provides a little extra opportunity for tension between those two sides (e.g., Reese trying to figure out what Finch's deal is in the first season, sort of the batman side not getting what the Wayne side is all about and being suspicious of it).

Even that decisive moment in season 3 when Simmons comes out of the shadows is an echo of the man coming out of the shadows and killing Bruce Wayne's parents, and Simmons' actions have a strong effect in the next episode (the one with the Johnny Cash version of "Hurt") of bringing out Reese's dark side, just as the man in the shadows is the trigger of Wayne's dark side.

 (Aside: my favorite shot in the Hurt episode is Shaw punching the guy in the face with the picture of Simmons such that the picture comes away smeared in blood. I take this as he is marked by blood, both in that he is a murderer and in that he is slated to die for his crimes ... I think they did this also with Turney's identification of Quinn).

(Brain Boiler: Is Carter Harvey Dent? Needing to exit before the tension destroyed her through bifurcation? I don't think these kinds of things work that tightly, but the comparison is interesting.)

Main Point:
Watching season 3 this time, it occurred to me that PoI is Batman for the real world - namely, the post-9/11 world. Even though the recent Batman trilogy could be assumed to be happening in a post-9/11 world, you could not really work that in concretely because, while it is obvious especially in Dark Knight Rises that Gotham is NYC, it is still the fictional city that stands in for it, not the real thing. PoI takes the themes and issues and character tensions of Batman and interprets them in an actual post-9/11 NYC.

The post-9/11 texture has been one of the key things that the show has been praised for since the beginning. I think it's cool that they have melded it with batman tropes ...the Nolan's really are geniuses.

Reese as Law Enforcement in a Post-9/11 world

I will throw in another Post-9/11 thing here from an FB post somewhere back along the line at the beginning of season 4. I don't feel like going back through to look that one up and I can remember the basic idea, and I don't feel like making another separate post, since this one already concerns the Post-9/11 thing.

At the beginning of season 4 , we find that the machine has given Reese the "secret identity" of being a cop. Now, this has a mechanical purpose for both the machine and the show: he has the extra resources a cop has for doing the work. But good literature is able to make its elements work well on both the mechanical level and the symbolic ... if it's good, it doesn't have to choose between overdone material credibility and cheap allegory --- it can do both material functionality and symbolic meanings without them being the negative formulations I just used of them.

On the symbolic level, Reese represents a very real question in law enforcement in the US after the two wars fought after 9/11. Many combat veterans returned from the wars disabled, but many came back physically capable and in need of work. It is always a real concern when a country has foreign war combat veterans serving in domestic law enforcement because the two things require two very different mentalities: The one whom a soldier encounters in war is the enemy; The one whom the peace officer encounters is a fellow citizen needing simply to be kept between the lines.

I'm not commenting negatively on either combat veterans or police who have maybe legitimately had to fire in real life. Combat is real, and a mentality of "execute with extreme prejudice" is unfortunately necessary, and there are also real situations faced by cops in which the antagonism displayed by some fellow citizens approaches the level of an enemy in war (they call it Chiraq for a reason). But I am noting that the residual presence of combat mentality can be problematic for "peace officers." The general tension between the two perspectives has been noted by much more knowledgeable people than myself - it is the reason that martial law is to be avoided if at all possible, so that you don't have your military filling the role of your police force (great exposition of this in the Battlestar Galactica reboot).

Reese was foreign ops all the way. His military service was Army and his intelligence service was CIA rather than FBI (if he was in England, he would have been MI6 rather than MI5). We can see the tension theme at play even before the machine puts him as a domestic law enforcement officer for his cover in season 4. There was always a tension between Carter and Reese over doing things through the law and doing things the CIA way. But especially when the machine makes Reese a cop in season 4, the issue distinctively on the page.

And on the whole "to kill or not to kill, that is the question" thing, I still get chills every time I listen to Medicine by the band Daughter (which was used for the visual storytelling at the end of the episode in which they choose not to, but Harold's relationship with the machine is damaged)

Update 10/14/15:
Just tonight I rewatched the episode in season 4 called "Pretenders" (the immediately preceding episode was call "Prophets). The Batman connection was REALLY heavy in this one, particularly with the Nolan iteration of the franchise. An imposter cop (imposter Batmans in Dark Knight) trying to fill in for a missing "man in the suit" whose disappearance (like in Dark Knight Rises) led to a rise in crime on the street going unchecked.

1408: Horror and Structuralism

This may be a bit of a jumbled post, but I will try to keep it clean and orderly.

First, this fits into my theories on horror as social criticism. More particularly it fits into criticism of societal structures. My thoughts on Paranormal Activity and Constantine had to do more with criticism of particular things within society: antagonism and influence peddling (and the treatment of those who can see it). This one is a bit more abstract in that it is a critique of society itself. By abstract, I mean that it is not a critique of a particular society, but rather the  inherent possibility of evil in society as a structure, the fact that it is possible to make constructs that, in essence, do the evil for one so that one can keep one's hands "clean."

The actual evil itself is not specified, other than that it drives people to madness and suicide. The point is that whatever the evil is, it has been done through a structure called society. Society is basically a construct ... a constructed concept of group identity.

The basic device here is that it is a room, and in literature rooms can often stand in for the idea of structure, and thus societal constructs. Now, one could accuse me of "eisogesis" here, of reading this in. But I would argue that there is a focus on the fact that it is particularly a room, an emphasis on it. When Cusack is getting the key, he makes a crack about whether or not he will be scared by their phantom/spirit/specter (all words are used). Jackson's character particularly latches on to this comment to make an emphatic clarification of his own that he NEVER said anything about a specter or a ghost etc. He then offers a most emphatic (all the more for the clandestine delivery) definition: "It's an evil fucking room." (22:30 ff). The point is too emphatic to be casual - the filmmaker is saying that we are not here dealing with traditional personalist singularities such as ghosts of individual people (or even impersonal singularities like a poltergeist). We are dealing with a structure. The emphasis is set off even more clearly at one point elsewhere by Cusack's own contradictory comment, "it's just a room" (circa 29:00). It may contain or trap ghosts, but it, the actual antagonist, is, ironically, just a room (although a very different kind of room than Cusack thought).

It is clear here that were are examining a structure, not, to put it in Cusack's words, "Ghoulies, and Ghosties, and Long-Legged Beasties" (or, in the vein of literature, individual persons or types of individual persons they might symbolize).

The fact that it is in a hotel is another structural element. This is brought into focus by Cusack's tape recorder commentary when he first enters the room. He does some esoteric commentary on the purpose of hotels, playing off of Jackson's comment that the appeal of hotels was fertile creature comforts, but he thinks they are really for "reassuring platitudes, a prosaic sense of the familiar" (29:50 ff). I will touch on the aspect of comforts, or "coping," as I will call them, again later, but for here the salient point is that the film-maker is here emphasizing the societal role of a hotel room ... keeping members of society comfortable or reassured.

A further consideration, if we are talking here about evil/violence done (a key subject in social criticism), is that rooms are made of walls. This might sound a simplistic or condescending (to the reader) observation, except that in this film specific things happen to the walls and with the walls, and thus the issue of walls specifically becomes a justified investigation. I will examine the instance of the post office walls below under a different heading, but for the outset here, the most direct and pertinent image is the blood coming through the walls (54:30 ff). This is an image of violence, one which the basic components of a room (societal structure) try to keep hidden, but eventually cannot contain it.

(In my post on Paranormal Activity I discussed horror, or at least horror done well, as apocalyptic in the technical sense, that is, revelatory)

One final note for this intro section: this is literature and it knows that ... it knows it is a structured story. When Cusack starts to hear his daughter's voice again and wig out, he says "you're losing the plot ... you're losing the whole structure." (47:15 ff). One thing that many people often don't think about is how the way we actually think is not static, no matter how much we try to tell ourselves it is. When we conceptualize our society, we don't think of a static picture, we think of something with a history (not to play with words too much, because this really isn't a pun, the connection is much more natural, although we're often too "scientific" to understand that ... but what we "conceptualize" is something that was born, that had a conception in the copulative sense). "Story" is the backbone of societal structure. Of course, one of our earliest childhood tendencies is to internalize so we don't have to suffer experiencing the existential angst of having to doubt the structures of protection: if Daddy is weak enough to succumb to mean thoughts, too weak to protect either of us from himself, then he must not be strong enough to protect me from "ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties" outside ... ergo, it must not be his fault that he gets mad, it must be mine. Cusack starts to tell himself this very kind of thing at this point ... he explains all of the phenomena he is experiencing in psychological and psychosomatic terms ("psyhco-kinetic fibrulations" and "hallucinations"). He tells himself it's just his own personal plot unraveling, not the plot of society (the room).

The Bed: The Foundation of Society

So, that's a pretty big claim about beds ... that they are the foundation of society. But the claim is not without its own foundation in the Western canon of literature. The primary place is the bed of Odysseus in the Odyssey. It is made with a living olive tree as one of its four posts, and it is commonly agreed upon by scholars down the ages that it is the symbol of the "home" and safety that Odysseus yearns and works so hard to return to. The olive tree is the anchor of the bed and the bed is the anchor of the home and the home is the base of society.

So, what about the bed in 1408. First there is what I call a tip-off line. Cusack is wandering around the room narrating his comments the way he wants to write them for his review, and one of the first things he says is "how many people have slept in that bed before you?" "How man of them lost their minds?" (35:35 ff). Notably, this monologue section starts of with a renewed focus on room-ness, "hotel rooms are a naturally creepy places, don't you think?" and even a grave reference in the "sarcophagal chambers" line. Later on in the film, of course, where do his and his daughters graves seem to be? Where the bed was (under the painting "The Hunt", 1:20:25).

When the room is examined with the UV light, the bed reveals the highest concentration of blood. But the most telling thing, for me, is that when Cusack decides to take the room down, to fight back, he takes only two actions: he Molotov cocktails the bed and then, once the blaze is going and has depleted a lot of oxygen, he throws the ashtray through the window for a backdraft to finish it off. the bed is the first to be attacked. The more something is a symbol of stability in a society, the more damage it will do if abused. Thus his first line of attack to combat the room, is to attack the particular bed in it.

Communication and Technology

As I demonstrated above, I have no qualms with arguing from the way certain words are related, flowing from the same root even when most of us think it is obvious that the various forms have parted company enough that there is no point in looking at the common origin. Here the words I am thinking of are community and communication. The first can often be a synonym for society. The second is not only what goes on between two people, it is, in some ways, the basis for society. Community has the ability to communicate with each other, not only linguistically but physically (as in communicable diseases).

And there are a number of communication images in 1408. The webcam call to his wife is important, because it is the only thing where we know something made it outside the room (unless you count the adapted ending where Katie's voice makes it out in the recording, but that's not the original ending, and, as I will discuss below, I think is actually more depressing than the original ... there is a third combo ending in which the manuscript he sent the publisher while "out" of the room actually made it to the editor, but I can figure no coherent way for that to hang together; I think it was just a clumsy attempt to see if another ending suited both their own and an audience's needs).

And this is a very telling scene, because in the act of communication the room distorts the communication in a clearly evil way. It tries to suck his wife in too. Notice that the self-picture window in the IM interface is blurry until the room takes over, then it enlarges and give him the evil grin and wink. Communication gets twisted. Even communication with self gets twisted: he remembers recording himself while looking out the windows, but when they become bricked over and he listens to his recorder again, he hears himself saying, "strangely the room has no windows" (59:50 ff)

As a sort of subsidiary image under this, we have the phone towards the end (1:31:00 ff). It tells him that his wife will be sent up when she gets there. Then the voice slows and warps as it says "we have killed your friends; every friend is now dead." Phones are a very common symbol for communication in literature written after their invention.

Along these lines, somewhere between 67 and 73 mins (1:07:00 and 1:13:00) he receives his daughter's dress via fax.

I mentioned above, and promised to mention again (IE here) the scene in which the hotel walls are demolished and it is revealed that he is still in the room (1:21:20 ff). Here the PO is not only a symbol of actual communication, but also of the hope of communication. In fact, it is more a symbol of the latter than the first. It is not where our letters are read (although it is where we get the letters from others, but we read them elsewhere usually) ... it is where we send them in the hopes of them being read, in hopes of actually communicating. And it gets demolished, and it is revealed that he is really still in the room trapped, with only twisted communication possible when the room wants to use him as bait to snare others, such as his wife.

Finally, while the TV is not usually device of real-time two-way communication, it does play a role here in memory, and sort of falls near these others as "telecommunication" (and right now I have a few good observations but not sure where to put them and not enough time to work that out, so this seems like the easiest place, with the other technologies ... you would be surprised how many stores us this "it sort of looks like" logic). The TV has two important scenes. The first is when he sifts through channels, and while he doesn't watch anything, the only thing he really checks out titles on is the porn (circa 29:00). Oddly, the porn item in the menu is right next to the family item. The other item the TV gives is precisely that ... the video of him and his wife with their daughter. And here I would argue that some communication is at least hinted at, with the daughter actually in the TV. They don't do it for long, but I think it is there. This happens another time, when he speaks her name when seeing her in the hospital bed, she looks up. (circa 1:00:00). Below I will discuss what the room might be beyond just a symbol for societal structure gone awry, and it has to do with the daughter.

But for right now, the issue of porn provides a nice segue to what I want to examine next, which is ...


Coping Mechanisms

What do people do when down on their luck or abused in a society? Or even just alienated or only temporarily homeless? As I mentioned above, the hotel and hotel room are for creature comfort, whether physical or emotional. And what are these? In this movie the pointed ones are alcohol and tobacco.  Notice how many times throughout the film he picks up the bottle of scotch Jackson gave him at the beginning. Cusack even suspects the booze of being spiked at one point. When he gets back from the expedition in the air ducts, after he dusts himself off, he says one word "Alcohol" and goes for the fridge (1:06:00 ff). After thrashing  the fridge, ironically asking his own creature comforts what they want from him, he answers Jackson's last question: "I want my drink." As for tobacco, notice when we catch glimpses of the past with his family, his "go to" for handling stress is "I'm going to get cigarettes" before the door slams.

But, as above with what is attacked when he fights back (the bed), I think the how of the attack is equally import - the room does certain things and reveals certain scenes that show us concerns of the author, but what Cusack does in return is also revealing. It is important the he uses the booze as a Molotov cocktail. And then look at what the final blow is (literally, bringing in the backdraft) ... the ashtray as symbolic of tobacco, thrown through the window. Cusack's retaliation against the room, and the only one that works, is to throw back in its face the things that are offered as consolation.

Religion

Some (particularly Karl Marx) would say religion is a coping mechanism. I'm not sure I would say that the film-makers agree that that is all religion is, but I think that they do agree that it can be used badly that way. And when it is, it will fail one, and so Cusack, after saying "ok, you win," finally opens the Gideon's Bible, only to find every page blank. Within the realm of societal construct and criticism, this reminds me of William Faulkner's Sound and the Fury. For Faulkner, there is a valid religious experience, but it cannot be reached by those stuck in the antebellum southern mentality. Only Dispy and her family, the black servants, can really have Easter Sunday. Benjy, the 33-year old (Christ figure) can only visit with them, and then when the sermon and service gets loud, all he can do is wail. As a 33 yr old gelding I do not think Faulkner meant him to represent all of Christianity as impotent, but I do think he meant him to symbolize the impotency of a Christianity that allows itself to be trapped in the white antebellum southern mentality. I think the empty Bible works in a similar fashion here.

Interestingly, the Bible was full earlier (29:20). It's interesting because the passage he opened it to "randomly" (and nothing is random when crafted by a film maker) was 2 Samuel chapter 11 ... the story of David and Bathsheba. Contrary to popular belief, that story was not originally meant to be mainly about lust (although that is involved). It begins, "In the spring of the year, when kings go out to war ... David was walking on the roof of his palace." In other words, he was not going out to war ... but his men were. If he had been in the battle camp as he should have been, he never would have seen her. This is a story of abuse of societal structure (the power of kingship).

Real Referent or Symbol

So, I have been talking all along about the room as basically a metaphor for structural societal evil. But I do think there is also a possible "real" referent. I should open this last section by noting that some of the reason I see it as able to do both roles is that I think there may be a connection, and not just thematically. It may be possible that a metaphor is more than just what we think of as a metaphor. We usually tend to think only of the analogy principle in metaphor. When metaphor is reduced to only this aspect it is an allegory, which has a legitimate use in literature, but a limited one. JRR Tolkien was known to some as being at least very cautious about using allegory too much. A French philosopher whom I have studied, Paul Ricoeur, has an entire 400 page, very dense, book dedicated to metaphor. His basic premise is to take metaphor beyond the basic analogical principle, because stripping metaphor down to just the analogical principle cheapens our understanding of it and thus what we can gain by studying or experiencing any particular metaphor. I can't really describe all of that here, but I will say that I think that what I am about to discuss does not have to be a competing interpretation to what I have discussed above. I don't think it necessarily even has to be simply an unrelated alternative. I think it is possible for the two to be intimately connected, but I don't have the time or space to develop that here (meaning that it's not only a matter of formulating it in writing ... I would have to work through it for myself even before that). So, I will settle for just outlining this possible "real" referent/s here.

There are two basic alternative endings to the movie, and my theory uses the original one, which is the ones the producers intended and I think makes the most of the movie. The original ending is used for the director's cut version on the second disc of the 2 disc release.

The key difference between the original and the changed endings is whether Cusack dies in the fire or not. In the original, he dies. The alternate ending that got substituted in the main version at least maintains that something real happened in the room. When he and his wife are later packing some stuff, they find the recorder and he listens to it. It is mostly garbled but at one point becomes clear, and they both hear Katie's voice from the scene with her in the room. So, since the wife hears it (dropping the boxes she is carrying when she does) we know Katie was really there.

(there is another ending where the wife does not hear it, and therefore we have no assurance that Katie was really there ... which, to me, makes it a completely inconsequential ending .... you don't know if he is just crazy hallucinating or not).

The official included ending (where the wife hears) depresses me. It means that Katie is trapped somewhere bad. We know this because in the scene we saw, she said the room won't let her stay, and she wants to stay. In addition, we have her voice other times in the room, and we have to assume that if the part that made it onto the recording was real, the other parts were real too. And in those other parts she basically says "Daddy, help me" (1:01:00 ff, for example). She is someplace bad. If this were all completely psychological analogy and we could say that her voice is his sense of guilt saying that he should have helped her more to be consoled when she was dying, rather than fighting with his wife, that would be one thing. Or if we could say it is kind of her memory saying "help me from being a bad memory for you, let me be a good memory," I'm not sure I would think that is a great ending, but it would not be depressing like the current re-done ending. In that ending, we know she was/is really there, because the wife hears the voice on the recording, and we know it is bad. Cusack got to make it out alive: great, hoorah and all that happy horse shit. The little girl is still suffering.

(Side note: the Katie voice progresses from playful to sad throughout ... at 46:30 ff it is playful in saying "Daddy, Daddy, where are you")

The original ending is, to me, much richer. First of all, we have a definitive statement that he did some good int he world of the living. He closed the room (as related by Jackson to the wife at the funeral). But we have more beyond that. The very last scene is Cusack's ghost walking to the window of the burnt out room and lighting a cigarette, sort of gazing out over that part of Lexington Ave. And then he hears the daughter's voice calling and says "ah ... yes" as if remembering something, and then turns around and fades as he walks into the room. Given the reality of her presence even in the main alternate ending (and we have to take it as real in this ending too, as he is a ghost figure appearing after a funeral), I take it as being that he not only closed the door of the room for the living, he also joined his daughter in the after life to protect her in whatever the dark place is she is in.

Along these lines, and I am not sure whether this goes on the metaphorical level or the real or both, but I think the room is also a prison for the ghosts. They are trapped there, re-enacting their suicides over and over again, unable to go on. I'm not sure how tightly this could be pulled on the level of the real, but on the metaphorical level it could be said that the ghosts represent the memories of those dead and that they need to be set free from being remembered only as suicides. Maybe that is part of the social criticism ... the morbid fascination with everybody being able to know everything through news media. In truth, the news media can only capture so much - it can't relate the truth of who a person was, the happy moments they also experienced and how they uniquely experienced them. But the news media does last. And so, for the world to see, as Cusack sees in the micro-fiche of newspapers, the people are recorded forever, in a sense trapped, in their worst moment of despair, their gruesome suicide ... this point is emphasized when Jackson surprises Cusack with the details of the 22 natural deaths, which he did not know because "the newspapers don't print anything about them" (19:20 ff). Shortly after, Cusack says that his readers expect the truth, and Jackson retorts that they expect "grotesqueries and cheap thrills" ... that definitely has potential for criticism of media pandering to morbid fascination.

There may also be something of the ghosts, all ghosts, being saved from servitude to the living. When Jackson speaks from the fridge he states that the living believe in ghosts mainly to have hope themselves that there is something after death (1:07:00 ff). Maybe it should be the other way round, that the living seek to help the ghosts (prayers for the souls in purgatory and such), rather than simply being helped by the ghosts in the form of belief in them helping us cope with mortality. I would have to think about that one a lot more.

And there is also the possibility of some connection with Hell. a Number of references are made to Dante's circles. When Cusack is describing the paintings, he mentions somebody's comment on the banality of evil, saying " if that's true, then we're in the seventh circle of hell" (30:45 ff). He returns to the motif of the circles of hell as he lays freezing, burning the history file of the room for warmth (1:11:10 ff). I'm not sure who the "smart-ass" is he is referring to, who spoke of the banality of evil, but it is not outside the realm of possibility that he is referring to the epilogue to CS Lewis' Screwtape Letters, a toast proposed by Screwtape, the senior devil at a graduation of new tempters (many film-makers are far more educated than the common movie-goer gives credit for, and very well may have read the book, or at least listened to the audio recording of it done by no less popular a voice than John Cleese).

Of course, the movie is also a character study. As Jackson notes from the fridge, after his daughter's death, Cusack's Enslin character spent his efforts debunking ghost stories, stealing hope. And the movie really is a tale of him coming to grips with his own past in his daughter's death. As he says in his voiceover as he prepares to fire the room, "I have lived the life of a selfish man, but I don't have to die that way" (1:31:50 ff)

And Cusack does the drama very well. His face as he realizes what is starting on the TV, and how he watches it, and touches the screen, is very moving. The scene with her in the ruins of the room, as he at first is suspicious of her as another trick of the room and then goes to her and holds her, and then she crumbles, ripped my heart out. The manic energy he has is good too. In the commentaries Jackson and the director talk about how they needed a strong actor to carry the film because it is so much monologue/solo scenes, and they're right that Cusack pulled it off.

A Riddle

Finally, I'm not sure what to do with the fact that the room gave Cusack the answer. At various points once windows and walls are bricked in, you catch a glimpse of a scrawl on bricks that says "burn me alive." But I don't remember seeing any reports of any of the suicides being by burning. A little emphasis is added to the mystery when Cusack sits in the chair as he prepares the Molotov cocktail, he says, "This may all not be real; and I may not even be real; but this fire ... that's gotta be real " (1:32:05 ff) ... and it is - in all version endings.

Afterthought

What is a hotel room most symbolic of? It is a room, yes. But there are rooms in family houses too (with their own symbolic value). What is unique about hotel rooms? this comes from a thought on the comments of hotel as comfort above. They are comfort for the traveler, for the transient, in a way. We all are transient at least sometimes. We are traveling, and that is when we stay in those rooms. Maybe we want those comforts so we don't feel too transient. Otherwise we might start to think too much about how transient life really is, even when you own a house etc.

Terry Pratchett, TS Eliot, and the Dance

Ever since reading Wintersmith, the third book in the Tiffany Aching sub-series in the Discworld series, I have had a theory on a literary referent Pratchett may be using. There are a couple related refrains throughout T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, and the best summation of the theme I have heard is the slight mash-up/condensation I heard a professor once give (or at least I think he did the mash-up, but it is possible it is my own mash-up of his condensation ...never can be sure).

"At the still point of the turning world, there is the dance, and there is only the dance"

Eliot was a bit of a mystic, especially in The Four Quartets. I had to study it some in a college class (although taught by a different professor than the one I just cited), and it is dense. I would simply note here the structure of paradox: a spinning world with a still point at the center, but that still point is not still; it is a dance, yet still thought of as ... still (wordplay intentional).

But, my main idea for this post is that I think Pratchett uses this refrain as a conceptual model for what he does with his characters and events, especially in later books. I think it captures his imagination, and has captured mine

As I said, I first started to think it, as best as I can remember, in reading Wintersmith. It may have started to form a little bit in the first two Tiffany Aching books (Wee Free Men and Hat Full of Sky), but Wintersmith is the natural place for it to come full force. First of all, the book begins with the "Dark Morris Dance" (which, according to TP, is his own invention as a spin on the traditional Morris Dance, cf the notes either at the beginning or end of the book), at the shift from winter to summer. In her sneaking watching of the dance, Tiffany's trouble begins when she gets into the middle of the dance, at which point she catches the attention of the wintersmith, since he is really at the center of the dance, and the confusion and his preoccupation with the human girl is that, in her rashness she has stepped into the place of lady summer, who is also supposed to be at the center of the dance.

I will come back in a bit to the concept of a human couple at the center of the dance, when I address the other major instance in the Discworld, which is Going Postal. But for here I want to note the other reason Wintersmith is the most natural place for this toconcept to come in, which is that TP is there using the Winter-Summer interplay. I have looked up what I can on The Four Quartets (I took the class in which I studied it close to 20 years ago, so that learning is a bit rusty, so I looked up some stuff again), and it seems that the agreed central motif in Eliot's 4-part poem is the 4-elements cosmology from antiquity (water-air-earth-fire). BUT it is also somewhat agreed that the 4-seasons structure is a secondary, albeit more latent, motif. So, it makes the most sense for Pratchett's use of the 4-Quartets dancing refrain to be most evident in the book in which he deals most directly with the seasons.


Going Postal

Ok, First things first: I never thought another book in the series could even begin to challenge Night Watch's place as my personal favorite. I also put off reading Going Postal because it was sort of a government in Ank Morpork book and the blurb didn't sound too exciting to me. Then I read it and really liked it. Then I recently re-read it again and realized that, while it probably did not unseat Night Watch from it's place at the top of my list, it did really challenge it. There is one theme that I may make a post on someday, namely the portrayal of linesmen on the clacks as a class of people, which TP gets inside of incredibly, much the way he got inside coppers in the Vimes series.

But what really blew me away, and what is the thing that I am going to examine here for looking at TP using Eliot's concept of the dance, is the Moist and Adora Belle arc. I simply loved it.

Ok, so, there are, it seems to me, two key scenes paired together via an image reversal. The first is when they dance in the aftermath of the burning of the post office. The basic image is that they dance as the post office burns and the hubbub of the rescue goes on around them (I love that word, hubbub, for the purpose of this discussion, because it has the word "hub" in it - a center of activity). In a sense they are at the center of it, dancing.

"He was back in the game. But, for now, by the light of the burning yesterdays, he waltzed with Miss Dearheart, while the scratch band scratched away."
(Going Postal, p. 273. trade paperback)

But, in this passage, it is not just that image that makes the theme jump off the page. It is also, alongside it, introspective verbage from Moist that puts the "stillness" aspect front and center too and wedded to the aspect of movement, particularly spinning.

"It was the thrill not of the chase but of the standing still, of remaining so calm, composed, and genuine that, for just long enough, you could fool the world and spin it on your finger."
(Ibid.)

Now, on to the second scene, and really, to me, the central one. It is the scene in which Moist comes clean with Adora Belle, tells her the whole truth. That's what makes this such an important scene, and thus raises this motif of dancing to a place of prominence in the work ... it is the scene where the relationship really happens: he is honest and she accepts him.
The description of the scene is simple, but is another very loaded tableau, like that at the post office fire:

"Around them, the city happened. Between them, the ashtray filled up with ash."
(Going Postal, p. 325, trade paperback)

This is what I meant by an image reversal, and what puts "the dance" here, even though one might at first object that there is no dancing involved on the page. The reversal is too clear not to have this connected with the first scene, and thus be involved with the dancing theme. Here, at the center is a picture of a still place, but one that is, rather, a dance of communication. The reversal is of the image of burning. In the post office scene the burning went on around them. In this scene it goes on between them (the ashtray filling up with ash ... note for those not familiar here: Adora Belle is the chain smoker).

The connection is made even more clear on the next page when the post office fire is directly mentioned (including a logic for the burning). Adora Belle suggests that he go to the roof of the PO and pray for his answer on how to beat the clacks (and I LOVE the comment on prayer here):

"Get yourself a little closer to heaven. And get down on your knees and pray. You know how to pray, don't you? You just put your hands together - and hope."
(Going Postal, p. 326, trade paperback)


(Sidenote: the logic for the PO fire is that now he can get to the roof; he could not do it before because the old mail was blocking the stairs)

Dancing and the Rhythm of Survival: Snuff and Raising Steam

For TP, dancing is sort of a symbol of coping with particular kinds of things in life, difficulties that have their own distinct rhythms. The first case I'll list is the bumps from landing after being momentarily airborne on the rough water that precedes the "Damn Slam," as the Wonderful Fanny does on the Quirm river (nicknamed "Old Treachery") in Snuff. It is Mrs Sillitoe, wife of the captain, who sums it up when telling Vimes about it and how to jump when you feel the boat lift:

"... and that's when you have to know enough to dance to the rhythm! Because if you don't dance to the rhythm of the slam, you'll dance with the devil soon enough!"
 (Snuff, p. 304, first release hardback)

The second instance I will note is in Raising Steam, when Moist climbs up and dances on top of the moving train:

" ... throwing caution to the winds, Moist danced on the top of the train, leaping from carriage to carriage, listening to the train's rhythm, moving his body to accommodate it and feeling the engine and the moods of the railway until it seemed he understood it."
(Raising Steam, p. 283, first release hardback)


Dancing and Social Justice

I think that one of the reason's TP has said he thinks Snuff may be his best book yet, despite the fact that many critics, including myself originally, think it's a bit lackluster compared to other books in the series, is that he brings out his social justice and humanitarian concerns so strongly, more front and center ... especially in the case of the goblins. The overall discussion of that theme is way too big to have here, and even too big to fill in material plot details for anyone who has not read the book. So, I won't even attempt ... if you have not read it ... do.

What I want to look at is the fact that here TP likes dancing here as well for his exposition. Basically he contrasts the goblins with the Nac Mac Feegle. Both live on the edge of society (the academic catchword for this is "marginalization"). But the Feegle have one advantage .. they can dance.

"They lived on the edge too, but they -- they danced on the edge, they jumped up and down on it, made faces at it, thumbed their snotty noses at it, refused to see the peril of their situation and, in general, seemed to have a huge appetite for life, alcohol, adventure and alcohol."
(Snuff, P. 200, first release hardback)


It is not a criticism of the goblins for not being like the Feegle. It is a searing condemnation of those who take advantage of the fact that they have not yet learned to dance like the Feegle.